Transforming Yard Management Through Innovation: David Bloom Discusses the Vision at Lazer Logistics | Logistics Series

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote and today’s guest is David Bloom, the vice president of national accounts at laser logistics. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, they specialize in comprehensive yard management solutions, including spotting,

shuttling, trailer management, gate services, and state-of-the-art yard management systems. They are recognized as the largest outsourced yard logistics provider in North America, and they pride themselves on reducing idle time, improving safety, and boosting efficiency for their clients. Now, David joined Laser Logistics in 2018 as a financial and logistics analyst before moving into his current role.

He also gained valuable experience as an account manager at Chickpea, giving him a strong background in managing driver schedules, asset inventory, and customer relationships. Under his guidance, Laser Logistics continues to evolve, embracing sustainability and innovative technologies. David’s leadership reflects the company’s emphasis on employee ownership and operational adaptability.

helping them build dependable partnerships with organizations across different industries. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications in a way that puts more money in your staff’s pockets and the company’s too.

As an example, one recent client with 450 employees boosted net profits over $412,000 a year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, VP of National Accounts at Laser Logistics. David Bloom, thanks for making the time to share your story today.

David Bloom (02:20)
It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:23)
So David, how did the opportunity to join Laser Logistics first come about?

David Bloom (02:29)
So actually I knew Adam Newsome, our CEO on a personal level, and we just became friends for about a year and he happened to ask me how it was going. ⁓ And I told him I was looking to possibly change roles. And I had no idea that what his company did, and I actually kind of forgot that he was the CEO of that company. And ⁓ he just said, hey, why don’t you come interview with us? And two days later I interviewed with them and.

think a day later I was offered the position and I took it right away and the rest is kind of history.

Anthony Codispoti (03:03)
Okay, especially keep in mind a lot of people listening are probably not familiar with your industry. So kind of break down in layman’s terms the services that you guys offer there at Laser Logistics.

David Bloom (03:17)
Yeah, so our core business is spotting. Some people know it as switching, yard hustling, ⁓ shunting. There’s a lot of different terms for it, But basically we’re moving trailers in and out of the doors at warehouses, manufacturing centers, paper mills, plants, that sort of thing. ⁓ Or moving them from the doors to the yard and then the yard to the doors.

We also offer short haul shuttles. Sometimes that’s between two distribution centers or a manufacturing center to distribution center or distribution center offsite yard. We have electric spotting trucks. We’ve got trailers. ⁓ We offer gate services, both automated and from a staffing perspective. And we offer drave services as well.

Anthony Codispoti (04:08)
So, okay, for the uninitiated, why is that even that service of sort of moving it from the yard into the warehouse necessary? Why doesn’t the truck that’s delivering the trailer just bring it right into where it’s supposed to go?

David Bloom (04:25)
Yeah, so that’s a great question. So if you think of, you know, a typical sleeper cab truck trying to back that trailer to the door and you’ve got hundreds, if not thousands of trucks coming into a distribution center every day, ⁓ those trucks generally take four to 10 times longer to back a trailer to a door than a spotter would. ⁓ And in the same capacity,

to take a trailer from a door, especially a loaded trailer, because if you think about it, if a trailer’s loaded, then that line inside the warehouse is shut down. You can’t load any more product onto a trailer. So every employee on that line is not working, so you’re paying them to do nothing. And no product’s getting out of the door, which you just think of the money that you’re wasting during that time. And you can’t rely on the over…

road drivers to show up exactly when that trailer is ready. ⁓ So, you know, our trucks and our drivers go grab that trailer. They don’t have to crank the landing gear, which takes longer. ⁓ They’ve got a hydraulic fifth wheel. They take it out of the door, they put it in the yard and they put an empty back in to continue to be loaded. So it’s about four to 10 times more efficient than if you just had the over the road drivers do it themselves.

Anthony Codispoti (05:50)
Wow. So there’s something about these trucks, that hydraulic fifth wheel that allows them to be a lot more efficient in the process than the over the road trucks as you kind of called it.

David Bloom (06:02)
Correct, yeah, and the majority of them are single axle, meaning that they can turn almost 90 degrees so they can maneuver in and out of these spots and throughout the yard a lot better than these other trucks. And then you throw in 20 trucks arriving at the same time and on the yard, then it just becomes even more clustered and the time adds up and the distribution center essentially shuts down.

Anthony Codispoti (06:27)
Yeah, and like you said, you know, the the over the road truck driver who’s coming to haul that that trailer away. He’s not going to get there at exactly the time that you know, they’re finished loading that trailer. So what happens to all that idle labor, you know, they’re continuing to get paid, but they’re not producing. So you guys are allowing for you know, a lot more efficient workflow. And I would assume also that ⁓ there’s a benefit and sort of ⁓

You’re not wasting as much fuel with sort of these truck, these bigger trucks idling, am I right?

David Bloom (07:01)
Correct, yeah. They’re definitely more fuel efficient and we’ve got better control on, you know, if there are no moves or if there’s nothing necessarily happening in the yard, ⁓ these trucks have automatic shutoffs that will go into place so the driver can’t just sit there with the air conditioning and that driver can go inside and has a break room and knows the processes, has a radio.

can’t give a radio or tablet to every driver coming into the facility to say, okay, your room’s ready to go, ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (07:35)
So what sets you guys apart from other companies doing similar things?

David Bloom (07:40)
So I think what sets us apart is we’re just, there’s a couple of things, right? We’re an end to end yard management company. And what I mean by that is a lot of these companies, and I actually just ⁓ closed the deal this week where we talked initially about just the spotting service. And then we said, well, they have one company do the spotting service. They have another company do the shuttle. And then they’ve got a third company do the trailers. And we said, well,

Why don’t we just do all of that? And we gave them a proposal. And while our proposal was higher for all of those services, it was about $500,000 less than what they were paying altogether. So we’re able to kind of bundle all of those services, not only to reduce costs, but under one contract also. So you’re not having to negotiate and handle three different contracts with three different providers or three different claims processes or people.

It just makes the process a lot simpler. What also sets us apart is like you mentioned earlier, we’ve got over 700 sites across the U S and Canada. So a lot of those sites are concentrated in a lot of different markets. So let’s say in Dallas, Texas, you’ve got a site that says, Hey, we, need to shift on the weekend this weekend. We’re working this weekend. Well,

the driver that worked Monday through Friday can’t work. Well, we’ve got another 250 drivers in the Dallas market. So all we have to say is, hey, who wants some overtime and who wants to work another eight hours? And a lot of times we’ll actually have drivers that are already cross-trained at that other site. So they can just step in there and you know, the processes, the trucks, the people, the procedures, and they can just hop in and you know, nobody on the inside knows it any different because the driver already knows everything.

Anthony Codispoti (09:37)
And I think this is probably one of the advantages of being the largest provider in all of North America, the scale that you guys have. You have that deep bench of trained talent who can step in and help out in a moment’s notice like.

David Bloom (09:52)
Correct, yes.

Anthony Codispoti (09:59)
So you were there for several years before they elevated you into your existing role, VP of National Accounts. What is it that you think ⁓ that they saw in your work that they were like, hey, let’s take this young guy who’s been here for a few years and let’s really put him in a position of leadership here?

David Bloom (10:22)
You know, I…

I don’t exactly know. I think they just saw someone who didn’t really have an ego who said, yes, there wasn’t anything that they asked me to do that I said no to necessarily that was too small or too big. I think I was willing to try anything, ⁓ which maybe I was a little ahead of my spurs on that on some things, but I was willing to try it. ⁓

And I think I was just reliable and they knew that I could get the job done on whatever they asked me to do. Or I was gonna do my absolute best to get the job done or die trying. So I think that’s what they saw it, I don’t know exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (11:10)
I mean, VP of National Accounts, this is a sales and business development role. You were coming from a financial and logistics analyst role, very different kind of responsibilities. Was that a difficult transition for you to make?

David Bloom (11:28)
Yes and no. I think yes, because I don’t think that I’m a typical sales guy where I’m just going to beat down your door until we get the deal. But I do think that that helped me a lot to be able to justify and to find a way to make a lot of these deals and a lot of these, even contract renewals, more palpable for a lot of these customers to say, hey,

Yes, I know it’s X amount, but think about the other side of what you’re saving or if you did it yourself or if you went with another provider, they’re going to do X, Y, and Z. Whereas our proposal does not include that. So you’re going to save on, it looks more on the front end, but you’re going to save on the back end.

Anthony Codispoti (12:18)
Explain that a little bit more why in some cases your proposals might seem a little bit more expensive upfront but in the long run they actually save.

David Bloom (12:28)
Yeah, so a great example is, you if a customer gives us a schedule and it’s got some overtime already in there, a lot of our competitors will charge for overtime over 40 hours, whereas we won’t as long as it’s part of the base schedule. We’ll pay our drivers the overtime, of course, but we don’t charge the customer anymore as long as it falls within those hours. But our competitors are able to come in with a lot of times a lower rate.

because they know after 40 hours they’re going to charge a much higher rate to the customer.

Anthony Codispoti (13:03)
And so you go into it knowing, hey, this is a 50 hour a week job. We’re going to have to pay some overtime to our folks. So we’re just baking that into the price so that the customer isn’t getting surprised down the road. Whereas it sounds like a lot of your competitors are maybe trying to window dress things a little bit. And they’re saying, no, no, no, no, here’s the rate. And then in the fine print, it’s like, yeah, but we’re going to charge you time and a half or double time for anything over 40 hours a week.

David Bloom (13:32)
Right. Or they’ll make the ⁓ hourly rate less expensive and the truck more expensive, ⁓ which, know, at like a 40 hour a week site or let’s say a 50 hour a week site, to use your example, they’re paying every week a very high rate for the truck. But on the hourly rate, they’re paying a little bit less. Whereas, you know, with us, if they paid

Anthony Codispoti (13:32)
and

David Bloom (13:59)
a little bit higher on the hourly rate and less on the truck, you know, a lot of times it was 40, 50 hour sites will vary between, you know, they may work 40 hours a week or they may work 42 or 47 or 52, but they’ve got a lot more control over the hours rather than just the fixed rate of the truck. So if we can keep the fixed rate low, we can work with the customer on the hourly rate, which is a little bit higher than our competitors.

But we can work with them on reducing those hours through things like optimizations or restructuring when moves are called out or how efficiently moves are done, that sort of thing. we can, it may be more expensive on the front end, but we can work with them to make it less expensive on the back.

Anthony Codispoti (14:46)
That makes sense. As you were transitioning into this business development, the sales role, ⁓ you said, you know, you’re sort of not maybe what people think of as the traditional sales guy that’s, you know, like pounding on their door all the time, like, you know, forcing the deal. Were there sort of mentors or folks that were helpful to you and kind of finding your footing and what your approach and your voice would look like in this role?

David Bloom (15:15)
Yeah, ⁓ and I think there’s been a lot of mentors just kind of along the way that have shaped me, right? Not only in this role, in my life in general. I think that starts with my dad who, you know, he was a soccer coach, a high school soccer coach for as long as I can remember, and ended up being our coach as well. But, you know, I saw the way he carried himself as a coach, as a father, as a person.

⁓ And I wanted to emulate that throughout my life. then, you know, ⁓ playing college soccer and leading the team as a captain and being entrusted with that responsibility was not something that I took lightly. ⁓ And then, you know, coming over to Laser and seeing first and foremost the way that the Newsome family and Adam and Phil specifically.

carry themselves and interact with everybody across our company and the way that they preach our core values and do what they say and say what they do. ⁓

really shaped the way that I interact with our customers. I don’t think that I have to give a big sales pitch and yell and scream and have to act animated. I just give them the facts and say, hey, this is it. This is what we can offer. I believe in our products and what we’re doing. And if it’s not for them, then it’s not for them.

Anthony Codispoti (16:53)
I like that. A couple of things I kind of want to peel apart a little bit there. ⁓ One, you’re talking about your time in athletics. Your dad was your soccer coach in high school. Obviously, you were very talented. You went on to play at the collegiate level. Not only played, but you were chosen as captain of your team. Kind of curious ⁓ how some of the skills

and leadership qualities that you learned in athletics have kind of carried over into your professional career.

David Bloom (17:28)
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. you know, I, I think anybody that has played athletics at a, at a high level, ⁓ can make a, ⁓ a great employee and a great leader and a great leader. It doesn’t always translate that way, but I think that they’ve been provided the skillset to be able to do so. ⁓ but for me specifically, think, ⁓ humility is a big one and

not having an ego of, know, it’s not a me thing, it’s an us thing. You know, we succeed, we win together, we lose together, we succeed together, we fail together, right? It’s nobody’s fault. Let’s figure out how to find a solution. ⁓ I think hard work and the fact that I’ve never seen anybody, including myself, work hard and not pay off in some capacity. So just kind of

no matter how difficult the project, the proposal, the days, especially in sales seem, ⁓ if you continue to put your head down and work, it’s gonna pay off at some point.

Anthony Codispoti (18:42)
That’s great. then the other thing I kind of wanted to dig into was, you mentioned, you know, the core values of the company and how the CEO and his uncle, you know, it’s a kind of a family-owned business, you know, how they sort of ⁓ exemplify those values every day. Can you say more about what those values are and how you see that show up in the leadership?

David Bloom (19:10)
Yeah, I think the biggest one is when you’re here, your family, ⁓ which I know it comes from Olive Garden as well. But I think it’s absolutely true and it’s just as fitting maybe for Olive Garden as it is maybe more fitting for Laser, especially being a family founded and owned business. ⁓ But.

You know, I’ve traveled with Adam, I’ve traveled with Phil, I’ve traveled with Steph. I’ve been with a lot of the new sums, especially the ones that you haven’t seen on the website too. And I’ve seen them put their blood, sweat and tears into this company. And it’s never with themselves in mind. It’s always with everybody else in mind. And I’ve, I know that Adam, Phil, Steph, every, all of them.

would have spent an hour on the phone with a driver from California, ⁓ who’s one out of our 10,000 drivers who had an issue with his family because their house burned down. And our CEO is spending an hour on the phone with him talking to him about his family and nothing.

Adam doesn’t have to do that, but he’s doing it out of the goodness, because that’s just who he is. He cares about him and he cares about ⁓ them being a part of our family. ⁓ And, you know, the principles of…

of how hard the Newsom’s work for Laser, I think not only shows up just in the success, but I think it shows up in all of our employees as well, because they see that, yes, I think Adam and Phil and Steph, they ask a lot of us, but it’s nothing but.

They always, I think, but they’re always the hardest working people in the.

Anthony Codispoti (21:22)
They’re never asking you to do something that they wouldn’t do themselves.

David Bloom (21:25)
No, and that’s what I was just gonna say actually. They’ve never asked anybody to do anything that they’ve not already done themselves or they’re not willing to do themselves. And to me, that’s great leadership.

Anthony Codispoti (21:40)
What do you think has allowed laser logistics to grow as rapidly and as large as it has?

David Bloom (21:49)
You know, I don’t think it has anything to do with, ⁓ and hopefully they’re not listening, but our investors, I don’t think it has anything to do with private equity. I don’t think it has anything to do with any of that. I think it does come down to our core values and just providing the best possible service to our customers. And the reason I say that is because, you know, for the first, I think 15-ish years,

We didn’t have a marketing team, we didn’t have a sales team. Everything just came basically from word of mouth or growth within our current customer base. And it was, hey, you guys are doing a great job at this site. Do you want to take a look at this site in Paris, California? Do you want to take a look at this site in Atlanta, Georgia? Or it was, hey, we talked to your customer next door to us. They said you’re doing a great job.

would you like to take a look at possibly taking over our facility? And that’s how we grew for the first 10 years or so, ⁓ 10, 15 years or so. And then we continue to grow that way too. And obviously we continue to grow now ⁓ in all of those other aspects through marketing and all of that sort of stuff. ⁓ But I truly think that that’s…

the biggest reason and continues to be the biggest reason for our success.

Anthony Codispoti (23:24)
You know, I think it says a lot about an organization when so much of their growth, especially early on, comes from that word of mouth. ⁓ Because your customers, not only do they appreciate what you’re doing, but they’re taking time out of their busy schedules to tell somebody else, these guys solved a problem for us, you should give them a call. And so, you know, I think that says a lot about that culture.

and those values that ⁓ the Newsom family has put in place there when you get so much of your business from referrals.

David Bloom (24:00)
Yeah. And to your point, you know, we, we’ve got a lot of customers who they go from one customer and they, then they change and they work for a new company and they say, Hey, by the way, I’ve got a great, you know, a great spotting company that can come in and do a great job for you guys. And they kind of put their neck on the line by recommending us. And I think that says a lot too.

Anthony Codispoti (24:25)
Yeah, I’m going to talk a moment, David, about sustainability and how that plays a big role at laser logistics. I understand your electric vehicle fleet has surpassed ⁓ a million, one million zero emission miles. Can you talk about why this is so important to the core of what laser is doing?

David Bloom (24:46)
Yeah, and actually we surpassed 2 million earlier this year. ⁓ and that was, so I’m assuming we’re probably around two and a half now, but I haven’t seen that the updated analytics on that. ⁓ and you know, this kind of goes back to Adam and Phil and, and just how intelligent that they really are, ⁓ and how forward thinking they really are. Cause

Anthony Codispoti (24:50)
wow.

David Bloom (25:13)
I remember them talking about this back in 2018 when I started and it’s like, eh, it sounds like a pipe dream kind of thing, but everything that they’ve talked about has come true. So, you know, as far as sustainability and how big of a role it’s playing in laser, you know, we went from one EV back in 2017.

And I think we’re rolling out around our 150th. Right around now, probably get up to 175 by the end of the year.

Anthony Codispoti (25:59)
Well, that’s pretty impressive. And why is that something that’s so important ⁓ for what you guys are doing there at Laser? Why has that been a key project for the Newsome family?

David Bloom (26:13)
So there’s, I think there’s a lot of reasons for that. ⁓ I think one, you know, we can see a big push for that in the industry. ⁓ But I think two, you know, we wanted to be proactive in coming to our customers who have big sustainability initiatives. ⁓ And those sustainability initiatives may be in other aspects of their business, but we wanted to be proactive and come to them and say, hey, you know,

there’s quite a bit of emissions in your yard. If you think about a distribution center, that’s where everything meets, right? The amount of traffic, the amount of diesel emissions that are on a yard. And if we can be a small part or a big part in reducing those emissions, then we can not only help their customer to meet their sustainability goals, but we can also help that area or that neighborhood or that city or that county.

to reduce those emissions in that area. ⁓ And not only that, we found that it’s actually, a lot of these EVs perform better in the cold and the hot, especially for our drivers. It gives our drivers better quality of life because it stays cooler in the summer and it stays warmer in the winter ⁓ because you’re not sitting on a big engine.

Anthony Codispoti (27:40)
Yeah, I could see that. You guys face any resistance or challenges in trying to roll this out?

David Bloom (27:48)
Yeah, so the biggest challenge is really when it comes down to the infrastructure costs because you’ve got to put, ⁓ you’ve got to run electricity to the ⁓ EV charging cabinets. And for that, the customer has to do some sort of, there’s some sort of infrastructure costs from the building to the charger. And it depends on, there’s a lot of factors.

that go into how expensive that could be. So you get a lot of pushback on the CapEx or sometimes the OpEx cost of that from the customer and whether they have that in their budget or not. So that’s really where we get the biggest pushback. It’s not necessarily we don’t like EVs or we don’t wanna go with EVs. It usually comes down to that. ⁓

or maybe it comes down to the cost of it. Because the electric spotters are more expensive from our side from a CapEx perspective. obviously you are saving on fuel, but sometimes you are paying more per week than you would with a diesel.

Anthony Codispoti (29:06)
And why is that? Is it because the electricity is more expensive in some way? what’s the reason for that?

David Bloom (29:12)
No, just because a diesel spotter may run you 120 to 150,000 and a EV spotter may run you about 300,000. And we break that down into a weekly fixed tops for the customer over a three-year contract. So obviously the EV is more expensive, but with a diesel, you’re still paying for fuel with an EV you’re not.

So you take out the fuel, you add back in the electricity, and sometimes it doesn’t come out as cost neutral or cost savings.

Anthony Codispoti (29:50)
And why would somebody choose to do it then if it’s gonna cost them?

clearly you’ve got a lot of folks that are making that choice. You you rolled out dozens of these things.

David Bloom (30:01)
Yeah, a lot of them are

willing to take on that extra cost because they truly do.

stick by their sustainability initiatives.

Anthony Codispoti (30:12)
That’s powerful. Choosing good for good sake. I’m wondering, David, this may or not be something that you have much of a role in, with 700 locations across North America, what’s your perspective on maintaining a sense of unity and strong communication across such a broad network?

David Bloom (30:16)
Yeah.

I know that’s been a challenge for our C-suite, especially with the amount of growth that we’ve had over the past several years, which is great, but obviously comes with its own set of challenges. ⁓ And I think Adam and Phil and our C-suite have done a great job with that, not only the virtual option of getting the whole, as much of the company on calls, ⁓

whether that’s once a month or once a quarter as possible. ⁓ But I think more importantly is introducing those core values and ⁓ representing those core values and enforcing, not enforcing, enforcing sounds very, very strict, but driving those core values and consistency on a daily basis, starting with the C-suite and going through our executive team.

through our regional teams and then down to our local teams. So I think it’s just a matter of consistency and I think that they’ve done a good job with that throughout our company.

Anthony Codispoti (31:45)
Setting aside any humility here, David, how would you describe your superpower?

David Bloom (31:57)
I think it’s composure. I think it’s matching calamity with serenity. You know, my mind just and my body just tends to slow down in those moments.

Anthony Codispoti (32:12)
And let’s take a little bit of a different approach than with this question from superpower to big challenge, serious challenge that you’ve faced in your life. What was that? How did you get through it? What have you learned going through it?

David Bloom (32:28)
Yeah. So by far and away, the biggest challenge that I’ve ever faced in my life is, ⁓ going through addiction and alcoholism. ⁓ and you know, today I’m almost nine years sober. It’ll be nine years, ⁓ sober and in longterm recovery in August. and you know, that that’s definitely the biggest challenge that I’ve faced in my life. And I think, ⁓

I can honestly say today that I’ve turned that, which was my biggest defect, into my biggest asset.

Anthony Codispoti (33:06)
How so?

David Bloom (33:10)
I think one is being able to share that message with not only other addicts and alcoholics who are still suffering, but those who are seeking a solution and looking to get sober themselves. ⁓ But also other people who have family members, friends, coworkers, loved ones who have died from this disease or

you know, are still struggling with this disease. ⁓ and maybe not only that, but I, you know, I’ve found that every person that I’ve ever come across in my entire life has been through something. Everybody’s got something right. And just on a, on a pure human level, we can relate on whatever challenge they’ve gone through and overcome, ⁓ whatever that is, we can relate on, that same level from a, from a human perspective.

Anthony Codispoti (34:08)
Congratulations on your ongoing sobriety. ⁓ Kind of curious if you remember sort of what the ultimate trigger was for you to get the help that you needed.

David Bloom (34:22)
Yeah, and it’s, it wasn’t necessarily a loss of anything material, although I think those things played a role in it for sure. I think I just, well, I know I just got to a point where I just couldn’t see my life going any further, the way that I was living. I couldn’t see the next day, the next month. I couldn’t see.

getting married or having children or a career or anything like that, the way that I was living. And I didn’t exactly know what I needed to do. I just knew something needed to change. And I knew sobriety was an option. And frankly, it was the only option that was put in front of me.

Anthony Codispoti (35:12)
When you say put in front of you, were there folks around you, ⁓ folks that you trusted, people who cared about you that were kind of helping you through this?

David Bloom (35:23)
Yeah, there were folks and loved ones that were pushing me in that direction. ⁓ But at that point it was, and I think they did a good job of

pushing that as a suggestion rather than saying you have to do this, because I truly do think you have to want it on your own. ⁓ And I just got to a point where I took that suggestion and said, hey, listen, I think you’re right. I would like to at least try this as an option.

Anthony Codispoti (35:57)
It sounds like you’ve been able to use this experience to talk with a lot of other folks who are suffering the same thing, or maybe they recently found sobriety themselves or their family members are affected by this. For those folks who are listening, what advice would you give to somebody who maybe finds themselves in a similar situation?

David Bloom (36:23)
I would say two things. One, there is a solution. And two, that solution is more than possible. And those are two things that I adamantly did not believe when I was in the midst of it because both of those things seemed impossible.

Anthony Codispoti (36:43)
Any advice for folks on kind of first steps to take?

David Bloom (36:49)
Don’t be afraid to ask for help and accept that help.

Anthony Codispoti (36:56)
Boy, that’s a big one, isn’t it?

⁓ Coming back to the business and the growth that you guys have seen, especially being VP of business development, or national sales, I’m curious, aside from the customer referrals that you get, what strategies have you found that have been most effective to contributing to that significant growth?

David Bloom (37:40)
You know, I think it’s…

I do think a lot of it’s timing, I don’t want to take away from…

marketing side of things or what we do on the business development side, I think all of those are fantastic. I think when it comes down to it, I think it’s very much relationship driven. ⁓ And whether that’s one person, ⁓ I develop a relationship with one person based on

mutual respect, do what I say and I say what I do. ⁓ And then they move on to another company or another role and they make that referral. Or it’s, like we talked about earlier, they are approached by somebody else or. ⁓

when a new company I’m working with asks for a referral, they say, can we ask this current customer if you guys are worth going with? And I’ve had that happen several times. And a lot of times it does work out. as cheesy as it sounds, and it is an AA saying, as long as I’m just doing the next right thing for the customers that I have.

and the business that we have and continue to try to deliver the best service possible for our customers and do right by them. I think the rest takes care of itself.

Anthony Codispoti (39:19)
You know, and I’ll echo that, you know, from my own personal experience as well as just, you know, the countless guests that I’ve had on the show, ⁓ you know, folks who have seen significant success like you guys have at laser logistics, ⁓ it really comes down so much to always focusing on doing what’s right for the customer. ⁓ And oftentimes that means sacrificing your own profits, you know, your own margins.

but bending over backwards and always asking, can I do for the customer? What’s best for them? And in the end, long-term, what’s best for the customer is gonna be best for the supplier too.

⁓ If you had to recommend a resource, a book, a course, podcast, something that’s been really helpful to you in your own growth and development, what would that be?

David Bloom (40:16)
You know, it’s going to sound cheesy and it’s going to sound biased, but, ⁓ the big book of alcoholics anonymous, which is the basic text for alcoholics anonymous. ⁓ and I want you to hear me out on this, ⁓ because it, yes, it is tailored to recovering addicts and alcoholics, but really it does provide just a design for living, ⁓ based on

humility, daily discipline, turning your assets or turning your defects into assets, ⁓ writing your past so you can improve your future. ⁓

spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health, all of those things are in there. ⁓ So if you can just kind of get past the references to alcohol or any other substances, it really does provide a design for living, ⁓ for me at least, that I can apply to all aspects of my life.

Anthony Codispoti (41:25)
I love that, a very non-traditional answer and I think that’s why there’s so much value in it.

⁓ David kind of curious to hear your perspective because every successful business, obviously there’s a great team behind it, especially a group your size. ⁓ What have you found? What have you tried and found that has been ⁓ successful for you in attracting and retaining good talent there at laser?

David Bloom (42:00)
Yeah, and I’m a big proponent of attraction rather than promotion. You know, I don’t think, I believe that if I’m living by my own core values and the core values of the company and acting in such a way, I think that the talent just follows. I think the rest, like we talked about, I think the rest takes care of itself.

I think you’re attracting that talent and people want to be a part of that. And you not only attract that talent, but you retain that talent. ⁓ And, you know, I, I don’t know if I’m the most talented guy in the world for, the most talented person at Lazer. I really don’t think so. ⁓ But, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of offers that you get in recruiters and stuff like that when you, when you are in this sort of role.

and they throw a lot of shiny things at you. But with Adam and Phil, and I truly think that they follow that same strategy of attraction rather than promotion, I haven’t wanted to leave laser. And I think that reinforces the answer to that question.

Anthony Codispoti (43:19)
So are you saying then a lot of the folks that come to work for you guys are kind of referrals from other employees? It’s the same kind of power of word of mouth that you guys have on the client side of things, it sounds like is also in play for you on the employee side of things.

David Bloom (43:38)
Yeah, and it’s a lot of former, it’s a lot of customers actually that come and they say, I no longer want to work for this company. I want to come work for you guys.

Anthony Codispoti (43:50)
Wow. How about any daily habits or practices that are an essential part of your daily life? Things that get you started during the day, keep you on track, that kind of thing.

David Bloom (44:04)
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. cause I, I’ve found that when I do have those daily disciplines, I, I’m much more successful, not only at work, but in my life in general. ⁓ but I think, you know, consistency and when you wake up consistency and when you go to bed, ⁓ for me, morning meditation before I get my day started.

⁓ After I get out of bed and you know get to my computer before I turn on my computer or anything like that Just a quick meditation to kind of slow everything down ⁓ Tends to make my day a lot easier I try to do something every day for my spiritual mental emotional and physical fitness ⁓ And then I try to have as much consistency in my schedule as possible, which is difficult with that, especially with a 13 month old But if I can get as much

consistency in my schedule and from like a work perspective, it’s when am I answering emails? When am I focusing on new business? When am I hunting? When am I doing the clerical work that those sales guys hate? When am I doing the account management piece of my day? And, you know, having flexibility within that, but trying to frame my week and my days up ⁓ into those different roles that my job requires.

Anthony Codispoti (45:31)
I’d be curious to hear if you’ve found this to be true as, you know, relatively new father, that ⁓ you didn’t realize how much free time you had in your life ⁓ until you became a parent. And ⁓ now ⁓ you’ve really got to be a lot more efficient in everything that you’re doing.

David Bloom (45:52)
Yeah, there’s no more, ⁓ you’ve got to literally map out every second you have with them, especially when you’ve got to get something done.

Anthony Codispoti (46:01)
You know, David, I’ve found that a lot of times in my life, a mistake that I’ve made in the moment, ⁓ I end up looking back on as being one of my greatest teachers. Can you think of a moment like that for you, something earlier on in your career that seemed like a setback at the time, but now you realize actually propelled you forward?

David Bloom (46:28)
Yeah. And so it kind of comes back to the sobriety and the recovery piece. So I actually went to school to be a teacher and I was a teacher for the first five years after college ⁓ and then was let go from teaching and that was related to my struggles with addiction and alcoholism.

And I thought that was my biggest mistake and it was just kind of the end, right? ⁓ What I found is that was just the beginning ⁓ to what has been so far and hopefully will continue to be a successful career.

Anthony Codispoti (47:18)
Isn’t that crazy to think that without having gone through that really difficult period in your life that you wouldn’t be in the position where you are now. That never would have been the chance for this door to open up at a company that, you know, for the dozens of minutes we’ve been talking here, I’ve heard you do nothing but rave about.

David Bloom (47:41)
Yeah, I never would have met the Newsom’s. I never would have met anybody in this company. It’s amazing how that works. And people ask me all the time, don’t you miss teaching? It’s not really. Other than when the summer first hits and I see all the kids out of school, I do start to miss it a little bit then.

Anthony Codispoti (48:01)
It’d

be nice to have a few months off, huh? Yeah. What would you consider to be the best decision that you’ve made for your career?

David Bloom (48:05)
Yeah, I would be. Yeah.

I think the best decision has been to stay with laser. ⁓ And it kind of comes back to what we talked about earlier, where there are offers all the time, right? And the grass always seems greener and listen, we’ve all got frustrations within whatever job we work. I think that’s always gonna be there. ⁓

You know it.

think that’s been the best decision that I’ve made is no matter how frustrated I am at certain periods or whatever’s happening, right? ⁓ To kind of sit back and have that perspective and say, you know what, this is a great company. I love being here. I really don’t want to move. Yes, there are frustrations, but there’s a lot of positives as well here. And the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Anthony Codispoti (49:18)
You know, and I think that’s such a great reminder for everybody listening is that the best of the best jobs, man, they still have days where you’re shaking your head and just, you know, going home feeling beat up. ⁓ And so it’s not realistic to kind of look for a work experience, whether you’re an employee or, you know, your ⁓ founder, the owner, ⁓ you’re not going to have

a day, you’re not going to have an instance where your days are all sunshine and rainbows, right? ⁓ The storm clouds come out and then eventually they blow away. And I think that’s what you’re getting at here with your story.

David Bloom (49:58)
Exactly. listen, unless Manchester United comes calling and they say they’ve got a center mid position open for me, I don’t know that I’m going anywhere, anytime relatively soon.

Anthony Codispoti (50:12)
You’ve been keeping your skills sharp, got your cleats ready.

David Bloom (50:15)
Yeah, they’re sharp, but there’s been a couple surgeries and I’m probably a little bit slower than I was.

Anthony Codispoti (50:21)
Okay, maybe we’ll cut that last part about you being a little bit slower out of the interview just in case Man U ends up hearing. I like it. David, what’s one thing you wish more people knew about your industry?

David Bloom (50:26)
Yeah, I cut that out. Yeah, no, I’m just as I’m faster than I was bigger, stronger, faster, all that sort of stuff.

What about my industry?

Anthony Codispoti (50:41)
Mm-hmm.

David Bloom (50:44)
I wish people knew how important it was. think a lot of people think of it as just kind of a necessary evil or a cost center. ⁓ But if you think about it, the distribution center, the manufacturing center, whatever it is, That’s where all parts of the supply chain meet. That’s where air, rail, sea, over the road, drainage, that’s where everything’s going, right? In and out of.

And that’s where everything can go wrong. and I really do believe I always, I always say this, that spotting is like the offensive line. We protect your, your, your biggest asset. ⁓ but a lot of times we go unnoticed and that’s fine with us. We we don’t need to be noticed. We don’t need the praise. We don’t need any of that until something goes wrong, you know, until we have a holding penalty or, know,

something like that and then it’s like, what’s this offensive line doing, right? The quarterback gets sacked, what are they doing? It’s rarely for anything positive, but the offensive line, when you don’t have it and you don’t have a good offensive line, and as a Falcons fan, I can attest to that, it’s very hard to have a successful team and a successful operation.

Anthony Codispoti (51:57)
You really notice it.

As you look at the future of your industry and more specifically laser logistics, what are some of the exciting changes coming the next couple of years that you’re particularly enthused about?

David Bloom (52:21)
Yeah, know, sustainability is certainly one that’s very exciting and we continue to make incredible strides in that, not only on the cost side, but ⁓ on the efficiency side. We just continue to learn more the more experience that we’ve got with it. ⁓ I think there’s been huge strides on visibility into the yard through data, which Adam and Phil were kind of at the forefront with. ⁓

on the spotting side. And we’ve learned that through acquisitions of other spotting companies. And then, you know, there’s a lot happening on the autonomous vehicle side where, you know, you’ve got spotter trucks that don’t even have drivers. They’ve got somebody, you know, driving a truck in Atlanta, Georgia from, you know, Nashville, Tennessee, or something like that. So there’s a lot of… ⁓

things happening that are automation driven, that are visibility and data driven, and that are sustainability driven ⁓ to get more flexibility and visibility and sustainability, not only inside the four walls, but outside the four walls as well.

Anthony Codispoti (53:37)
Is there any move towards ⁓ AI, ⁓ driverless vehicles, anything kind of more on the bleeding edge of tech that you guys are looking at?

David Bloom (53:49)
Yeah, I think the, I’m not as well read in on the autonomous vehicle side. ⁓ I do think there is some things on the AI side on autonomous vehicles with spotters. ⁓ But I think the technology is not super far out, but I think it’s a little bit more far out than maybe an autonomous vehicle where somebody’s manipulating it from.

control center versus, you know, it’s just AI driven.

Anthony Codispoti (54:23)
You know, David, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask, I want to do two things. I’m going to invite all our listeners to go ahead and hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app. Had a great interview today with David Bloom from laser logistics. And I want you to continue to get more fascinating content like this. David, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you or laser logistics. What would that be?

David Bloom (54:50)
Yeah, so the best way to get in touch with me is probably just through LinkedIn. ⁓ The best way to get in touch with Blazor Logistics is you can go to our website, blazorlogistics.com, or you can look us up on LinkedIn and send us a message. ⁓ Either way, someone will get back to you.

Anthony Codispoti (55:10)
And for those folks who are listening laser is spelled with Z la Z er, ⁓ but we will include links to ⁓ David’s LinkedIn profile, the company website, which is laser logistics.com and their LinkedIn page in the show notes. So last question I have for you, David, let’s say you and I reconnect a year from now and you are excited. You are celebrating something. What is that thing that you’re celebrating?

David Bloom (55:15)
Yes.

Well, first and foremost, I’d like to be able to say that instead of almost nine years sober, almost 10 years sober at the time, I’d like to be talking more about what my then 26 month old daughter is doing and be able to brag on that. I’d also like to be able to share that I’m well ahead of my sales goal that I’ve got.

six or seven new logos that came in and no lost business either.

Anthony Codispoti (56:14)
I love that and I can see you’re a man with his priorities in the right place, sobriety and family were right at the top and then sales were underneath that.

David Bloom (56:23)
Yeah, actually I do have one more. I’d like to be able to say that Georgia football won another national championship, so I do want to throw that in.

Anthony Codispoti (56:30)
As an Ohio State fan, I hope it’s you and I meeting in the championship game next year and we can.

David Bloom (56:32)
Yeah.

I’d rather not play you. don’t like playing Ohio State,

but if it means a win, that’s fine. I may get a little bit more gray hair playing you guys again.

Anthony Codispoti (56:41)
Yeah.

Well, you can see what not only the Big Ten, but the SEC has done to this guy here. So I’m, I’m right there with you. Yeah. David Bloom from laser logistics. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

David Bloom (56:50)
I get it, yeah. We’ve paid our dues.

Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Anthony Codispoti (57:03)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.